Shortly after eleven o’clock on the night of May 1st, two MH-60 Black Hawk helicopters lifted off from Jalalabad Air Field, in eastern Afghanistan, and embarked on a covert mission into Pakistan to kill Osama bin Laden. Inside the aircraft were twenty-three Navy SEALs from Team Six, which is officially known as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or DEVGRU. A Pakistani-American translator, whom I will call Ahmed, and a dog named Cairo—a Belgian Malinois—were also aboard. It was a moonless evening, and the helicopters’ pilots, wearing night-vision goggles, flew without lights over mountains that straddle the border with Pakistan. Radio communications were kept to a minimum, and an eerie calm settled inside the aircraft. Fifteen minutes later, the helicopters ducked into an alpine valley and slipped, undetected, into Pakistani airspace. For more than sixty years, Pakistan’s military has maintained a state of high alert against its eastern neighbor, India. Because of this obsess…

I want to talk about real heroes today à not the kind we elevate to the status of
demi-gods too easily and unthinkingly.

“There’s a secret society of geniuses who
weave and shape the fabric of our culture,” somebody had said about Subrahmanian
Chandrasekhar (he was known among his colleagues as ‘Chandra’) on the occasion
of awarding a medal to Chandra.

Yes. Chandra was such a genius and so was
Srinivasa Ramanujan.

It is not widely known that one of NASA’s
space telescopes (‘Great Observatories’) is named after him? à the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. The most
well-known of the space telescopes is of course the Hubble Space Telescope
which has revealed so much about the wonders of our universe in its 20 year
long lifetime.

Every educated person must consider it
his or her bounden duty to be acquainted with the images and the results of
these great space projects.

To give just a bit of a primer about
Chandra, some of his areas of work included these ·stellar
structure, ·theory of white
dwarfs, ·st…

I realized with a start that this week is the birthday of my
favorite character from the pages of history.

When I flip through the pages of history and of course I am no
professional historian, I find that I have more regard and affection for
Jawaharlal Nehru than anyone else.

Of course, there is Mahatma Gandhi. And there are others belonging
to India and to other nations whose achievements I find awe inspiring or
admirable or creditable or inspirational.

Internationally, there were men like Washington to Jefferson to
Lincoln – three of the great presidents of the United States. There was
Napoleon and there was Lenin. And Mao. The 20th century was a period that
provided enough scope for megalomaniac men of varied hues to chase their dreams.
So, recent history is replete with larger than life characters – some who
achieved an astonishing amount of infamy such as Hitler and Stalin and
Mussolini to others who have left their mark on human history which is
essentially positive: men such as C…

When people are ‘lucky’, they tend to reflect on their good luck and tend
to thank providence profusely for it and reach conclusions such as “Life is
Beautiful.”I always wonder if life is indeed beautiful – and, even more pertinently,
how valid an argument it is to reach that conclusion when one happens to get
“lucky” by chance.I recall numerous instances of people who survive natural disasters
thanking the Lord for letting them live while others died. Without citing any
particular incident, let us just think for a moment how fair that is – to thank
God for letting you live. How about the others who died? Were they at fault
somehow and deserved to die? The recent serial blasts in Jaipur killed many
people. Did the good Lord decide that these people were unworthy of living and
so deserved to die and so the terrorists were in fact agents of God. So, why
spend so much resource in trying to find them and punish them?The September 11, 2001 attacks in the US were carried out by people who w…

A few quotes from the incomparable Feynman:"
… people — I mean the average person, the great majority of people, the enormous majority of people — are woefully, pitifully, absolutely ignorant of the science of the world that they live in, and they can stay that way … And an interesting question of the relation of science to modern society is just that — why is it possible for people to stay so woefully ignorant and yet reasonably happy in modern society when so much knowledge is unavailable to them?
Incidentally, about knowledge and wonder, Mr. Bernardini* said we shouldn’t teach wonders but knowledge.
It may be a difference in the meaning of the words. I think we should teach them wonders and that the purpose of knowledge is to appreciate wonders even more. And that the knowledge is just to put into correct framework the wonder that nature is. ""
… as I’d like to show Galileo our world, I must show him something with a great deal of shame. If we look away from the scie…

I am planning to build a house to live in. I am thinking
out-of-the-box and thinking big. Really big. I am planning on building a
50-storey residence for myself and my little family. You think that’s a bit big
for a single family? No, no, let me explain. The first five floors of the building will merely constitute the
car park for all my cars and those of my guests. The next five floors will be service floors that will house
various amenities such as a laundry and warehouses to stock food supplies, etc. Then, the next ten floors will
be for my guests. There will be master bedrooms and massage rooms and Jacuzzis
and gyms and sprawling bathrooms and facilities for playing lawn tennis and
basketball and squash. The next five floors of the building
will house a common library to provide intellectual stimulation to my friends
as well as me. There will be five floors on
top of these devoted to entertainment. There will be 5 movie theaters with
various seating capacities. There will of course be a…

We inch towards (or gallop towards -> depending on how you feel about this year) the closing of 2012. I don't know if the present month of October has been more frenetic than the rest of the months. But it feels to me as if it has been. So I am inclined to do a running summary of the month as a diary entry for future reference.

Among the many October surprises have been the *win* attributed to Romney in the first Presidential debate as we approach the quadrennial presidential election in the U.S. Felix Baumgartner jumped from 40 kms up in the atmosphere and thanks to the magic of TV, perhaps billions of human beings -- sitting in their drawing rooms, waiting at the airport lounge, drinking beer in the bar or elsewhere -- were witness to the successful accomplishment of this feat of superhuman dare-devilry. There are not many records to be made left to make - this was one of the last for the forseeable future and the door is now closed on this one as well. Unless som…

Hopefully President Obama will have managed to silence the commentators with his spirited performance during the second debate. Maureen Dowd won't be pointing to Barack Obama's biographies in next column pointing out how the President is averse to confrontation and how that's at the core of who he is.

I thought the over-reaction to the 1st debate had been unjustified -> I knew Mr. Obama will be in a feisty-er mood this time around since that's what the constituency demanded. Mr. Obama stood up to the pretentious and oh-so-fake Romney without appearing to be jarring or a bully -> both qualities that are the trademark of Mr. Romney.

The candidates got to almost a dozen questions with a tough-to-rollover Candy Crowley as the moderator. On Libya, Romney was particularly egregious as a foreign policy novice. On financial matters and tax issues, Romney sought to show that he had a plan -> the only problem was that this was a plan that is entirely distinct from the oth…

Do we
exalt the John Galts and Howard Roarks among us or despise them? Do we admire
the ultimate, self-centered and selfish capitalists or the selfless,
self-sacrificing altruists?

Oh sure
there are the Martin Luther King, Jr.s and Mahatma Gandhis and Nelson Mandelas
and Aung Sun Suu Kyis we like to point to as icons and worthy role models for
our children. But look deeply and we find that we are obsessed with the
wealthy. And who are the wealthy? Why do we let the Robert Rubins, Sandy
Weills, Jakc Welchs, Jamie Dimons and their Wall St. brethren keep their
millions? Because we consider that right and their right. Let alone
the hedge fund people whose entire purpose is to become billionaires. How many
people explicitly make life choices that will lead to a life of service ->
not be a charlatan like Mother Teresa but just helping the underprivileged
without trying to 'achieve' greatness by so doing. So Lance Armstrong and Greg
Mortensen and the Evangelical Christian blowhards s…

The
historical record which clearly shows that presidents don't get re-elected when
the unemployment rate is high doesn't much reflect the demographic reality of
today.There
are not that many white, young, unemployed people who buy into Romney's vision
of the free-market creating umpteen millionaires and hence removing poverty and
making Social Security, Medicare and other safety nets unnecessary. May
be Obama will win because of these factors even if he comes across as wonky or
lackluster or not-aggressive-enough in the debates as the media and all the
pundits have been harping on. It's
tough to believe that Americans can be so forgetful about recent economic
history when W. came into office with a surplus and there was debate between
Gore and W about what to do with that surplus. Bush explicitly cut taxes for
the rich as he had promised to do (at a cost of a trillion dollars) and ran up
a trillion dollar bill for an unnecessary war in Mesopotamia. The TARP designed
by …

Are you a Congi? A CRT? Perhaps a pseudo-secular Indian. Or an Internet Hindu. Or a right winger. A Hindu nationalist (dwelling outside India?).

These are some of the gems that one comes across as the frenetic debate rages in this country about the direction we wish to take.

Clearly, India is 'resurgent.' India is not the first nation in the history of the world where people suddenly acquire a heightened sense about who they are just on the basis of their imagined or real history. History is fact -> except when it's entirely fiction that people want to believe.

Nationalistic pride has not been a positive force in world history - just think of Japan, Italy and Germany in the 20th century. A sense of superiority based on notions of nationality, race, or religion makes people blind to reason and facts. Yet in the 21st century, despite the world wars and the Rwandan and Balkan genocides of the '90s, we are again seeing resurgent nationalism and te…

I read one more article by one female about how women have the right to wear what they want, when they want, where they want, etc.

I would love it if women wore revealing clothes whenever they were in a public place -- not merely skin-hugging tight jeans, but short, short skirts like those Hollywood celebs wear which reveal their panties intentionally or otherwise.

The top of the dress should reveal good amount of the boobs as well or preferably have wardrobe malfunctions - manufactured or otherwise.

Young good-looking women wearing these clothes should preferably visit areas of Delhi at 2 a.m. which are particularly untouched by the rule of law. May be they can have their grandmother accompanying them who should be carrying 2 lakhs in cash or wearing a good amount of gold jewelry.

The amount or number of incidents of rape in India seems not-too-high -> that's probably because most such incidents are in fact not even reported to the police either because the perpetrator is known to…

I haven't thought about this issue much. But it seems to be a recurring issue in developed nations such as the United States and the U.K.

It seems obvious to me that there are far more important and serious challenges facing the world out there. In India, the far bigger issues facing women have got to be issues such as domestic violence. I believe millions of women must be silently suffering from malevolent males -- drunk or otherwise. Society in India is structured in such a manner that women have very little explicit economic value and in a poor society, it's the men who make the money -- howsoever little it might be -- who hold the strings.

To change this state of affairs, women will need to realize that taking care of kids and cooking have got to be secondary to developing skills and expertise. It's a kind of long term change that is tied in with a lot of other issues and in the next 30 years, we'll see som…

This is the
early take from the media pundits on this debate.The verdict being that Obama lost the 1st debate. I think that's a bit over-the-top because: Remember
Obama's "long-game"?This
is the 1st one. Two more to go.Are
voters going to vote based on Romney's enthusiastic lying or Obama's
soberly pointing out the fact that Romney doesn't really have an
alternative, that Romney talks about repealing Obamacare without saying
much about how.Here are the takes
from a few pundits. Well, I’m with all
the other talking heads: Mitt Romney won this debate. Barack Obama lost it. I
mean, he got his butt kicked. It was, in fact, one of the most inept
performances I’ve ever seen by a sitting President. Romney–credit where it’s
due–was calm, clear, convincing (even when he was totally full of it) and
nearly human. The real mystery was Obama. Where on earth was he? Why was his
debate strategy unilateral disarmament? Why did he never speak in…

Let’s consider a few fun
possibilities that would occur if Gandhi were around today.What
would happen to all the self-proclaimed Gandhians? Would Gandhi be in
favour or opposed to Anna Hazare?What
would Gandhi do with lying lawyers like Kapil Sibal or tendentious toadys
like Digvijay Singh?May be
Gandhi would go on an obligatory spin in the skies in the Sukhoi and the
LCA Tejas.Would
Gandhi have been miffed at Pokhran II àIndia’s famed nuclear
tests of 1998? May be he would have gone on a fast unto death. And how
would the glacially moving poet Vajpayee have reacted to that?Though
he was lean and thin, still Gandhi would need a knee-cap replacement
surgery at this age.Would
Gandhi hum along with the catchy Kolaveri D tune or criticize it as
nonsense … somewhat like … err … Javed Akhtar?May be
Gandhi would have preferred Gangnam Style and we would all be seeing a
YouTube video of him dancing merrily.Would
G…

The rich Indian shall spend her honeymoon basking in the sun draped sands of the beaches in Mauritius and Seychelles and Pattaya and elsewhere.

She shall go saree and shoe shopping in Dubai and London. Depending on her social class, she shall sashay down the London High Street (is that where the top brand-name shops or boutiques or whatever they are called are located?) and shoo in to Saks Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and then Bergdorf Goodman and also visit the Bijan boutique on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.

These are surely the immutable laws of nature --> enforced more stringently by the ruling gods of the universe than other may-be laws such as those said to have been discovered by Newton upon the fall of an Apple iPhone. Indians will surely continue to perform these activities even in the 22nd century. Or till all the hydrogen in the interior of the sun runs out and the dying sun blows out like a grotesque, bloated corpse in another five billion years and devours Earth itself.

Shivam Vij argued at Kafila how and why he' s a Hindu and not a terrorist. I am wondering what's the thing about being a Hindu that appeals to him.

He says Hinduism is a religion of peace. So what? Many people also say that Islam is a religion of peace. Which doesn't seem to be the case right about now considering the violent reactions of Muslims in many of the world to the silly Prophet Mohammed film.

Muslims always react with violence to similar acts that they consider to be 'insulting' to the Prophet. Islam is a religion where there's no scope for argument. The case is permanently closed.

That is of course not unique to Islam by any stretch of imagination. Closer to home, Hinduism has many mythologies which are funny and ridiculous and otherwise intelligent people somehow suspend their disbelief to agree with obviously stone-age notions.

The irony about Rahul Gandhi's failure is
this.
People may be rejecting his charms -- such
as they are -- but in its place, what are they opting for?
I think they're opting for something worse.
I think people are becoming ever more conscious of various local identities
based on religion, language, caste, etc.
So you have regional Hitlers springing up
all over the country.
Since you mention Uttar Pradesh, the guy
who eventually won, one Mulayam Singh, is apparently known to run his district
in such a manner that the district is 'untouched' by the rule of law or the
machinery of law enforcement. Mulayam is The Law there.
Then there is the satrap named Narendra
Modi who taught a lesson to the Muslims in 2002 and runs a financially
uncorrupted administration focused on development of the state and now based on
his record in Gujarat, aims to become the Prime Minister of India.

So how do people prepare for the time
when they are dead? How well prepared are you? You could say that some people
tend to be better prepared than others. People like Steve Jobs had cancer and
battled it. Some forms of cancer like what Jobs had or what Christopher
Hitchens had are incurable or on the borderline between curable and incurable. If you happen to get one of these
ailments, of course you know that your time on Earth will
soon be up. Not that anyone is ever immortal. So far. So I don’t know if it really matters much
if we happen to get a form of cancer or inoperable brain tumor or glioblastoma
like Ted Kennedy. And what does one do about one’s vast
wealth after one’s body becomes one with nature? Well, luckily or unluckily, most of us in
India don’t have to worry about such matters as not many of us are billionaires
with our personal 30-storey buildings. But here are a few examples of some
famous folks and their instructions about stuff to be done when they died.

I read the cover story on Newsweek
which talks about whether a college degree is all that it is cracked up to be.I don't
even want to talk here about stingy and weird American parents who pretend to
be martyrs or heroes just because they 'paid' for their kids' college
education. I mean ... Anyway, here's
a look at the economic brute facts of life for Americans and people of other
advanced/developed nations. Some things appear obvious to me as an Indian:

Americans
whose mother tongue is English should not have to go to university to learn
English. Not in the 21st century.Less
lawyers are better.Progress
is unidirectional and not cyclical. The assembly line of Ford is not going to
be re-invented. Ever. Hopefully we'll also never again be making airplanes and
tanks by the thousands in assembly lines. Thousands of women are not going to
be sitting at telephone exchanges. Managers typically work without secretaries now.We
live in a world of robotic assembly lines. The…

I have had this
idea probably since a decade and a half. My idea is
simply this: why can’t there be a permanent full moon out there in the evening
sky? Of course, those of you who have always been city dwellers need to get out
of your cities and go into the countryside and experience a moonless starry
night for yourselves and see the dazzling vista that it presents. And you need
to sit on a sea beach on an evening when there is a full moon in the sky and
experience something which is awe-inspiring and timeless. We need to find time
in our busy lives to spend some time in the lap of nature and reflect on the
grandeur of the universe which has been there for almost forever and unless we
humans do something drastic selfishly, will go on almost forever as well. Why I
use the word ‘almost’ is because, of course, nothing in nature is permanent –
nothing really lasts forever. Even the
mountains and the oceans and indeed this planet that we inhabit and the moon
that we admire and the sun which…

Sachi Mohanty

My favorite words at present: There are no lessons to be learnt, no
discoveries to be made, no solutions to offer. I find myself left with
nothing but a few random thoughts. One of them is that from up here I
can look back and see that although a human life is less than the blink
of an eyelid in terms of the universe, within its own framework it is
amazingly capacious so that it can contain many opposites. One life can
contain serenity and tumult, heartbreak and happiness, coldness and
warmth, grabbing and giving — and also more particular opposites such as
a neurotic conviction that one is a flop and a consciousness of success
amounting to smugness.

I think I am a born rebel or a subversive. I am definitely an atheist. I sometimes feel that in a country as suffocatingly religious as India, some of us have to go to the other extreme as a counterweight to all the religious blindness which is there.